Trendy Criticism

I recently read a review of a small independent film that criticized the film for being too trendy. Is that really a valid criticism?

Think about it, you’re criticizing a film for what’s happened around it, not for the film itself. This particular film was criticized because it had trendy music by a small but popular band, it was inexpensively made and focused on acting and characters rather than larger scale gimmicks, and because the only truly worthwhile thing about the film was its charm. We’ve had too many of those, says the critic. If the film is made well, is that a bad thing?

Let me call out my own hypocrisy for a second. I consistently slam romantic comedies and horror films for being too formulaic, and I slammed on Avatar a bit for being the EXACT same story we’ve seen in countless other movies, but I think this is different.

When I slam on rom com’s, horror films, or Avatar, I’m slamming the reproduction of the SAME movie, with the same story, same gore and porn, same banging of pots and pans, same jokes, and same characters over and over again. The critic mentioned above was ambiguously slamming an independent film for being…independent. Is it the fault of the director that he had to make a movie with a small budget, therefore relying on charm because there was no money to do anything else with his material? Isn’t this really why most independent films feel the same, because they all have to make due with what they have, and what they all have is good ideas and no money?

Now don’t get me wrong, the popularization of these independents has made them a bit too trendy. It’s become popular for indie bands to play the soundtrack for small films starring huge stars who want to make something “real” rather than the crap they normally make. Ben Stiller might be jumping on that bandwagon a few months too late with “Greenberg”, because people really are growing tired of this trend. But just because it’s a trend, does that mean that we have to discount ALL of the films that fall into the trend. Does something being trendy make it bad?

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Stranger than Fiction”, “Dreamgirls”, “Napoleon Dynamite”, “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Margot at the Wedding”, “Juno”, “500 Days of Summer”, the list goes on. Jim Carrey, Will Farrell, Steve Carrell, Jack Black, Jennifer Garner, Eddie Murphy, the list goes on. Overwhelming maybe, but look at the list. There are some excellent movies here.

Could it be that criticizing trendy films is just as trendy as the films they criticize?

By the way, I finished January at 33 movies. More than one per day. I am going to slow down a bit this month so that I can find more time to read. Also, We’re a month into the year and I haven’t even started the “year of Kurosawa”. It starts now. Here are my last 6 films for the month.

Alphaville
Elevator to the Gallows
Whatever Works
Is Anybody There?
Jules and Jim
A New World
5 great films and one horrific film (Whatever Works).